From Staging to Full Admin Control In Prod: A Breakdown of Critical Authentication Flaws

In today’s cybersecurity landscape, misconfigurations and broken authentication mechanisms are among the most dangerous vulnerabilities that can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive systems. In this blog, I’ll share a wild ride that led me to discover a critical into a case study where a minor oversight allowed an attacker to achieve Admin Panel Takeover, compromising sensitive user data and providing full administrative control over a production environment.

While the actual URLs and names are anonymized for privacy and security purposes, this scenario highlights the importance of security best practices, especially when it comes to staging environments and the handling of authentication tokens.

Background: Exploring the Subdomains

I was dong a routine subdomain enumeration. I was poking around the web properties of their admin panel. Their main admin portal, which we’ll refer to as admin.sales.redacted.com, was locked down tight. I couldn’t find anything other then the login page. The sensitive nature of this system suggested that only authorized users should have access to it.

Upon further exploration, I identified another subdomain, admin-stgv2.sales.redacted.com which appeared to be a staging environment. This subdomain looked nearly identical to the production version of the admin panel I saw before.

Initial Access: Default Credentials in Staging Environment

Testing the login functionality on the staging environment, I attempted to use default credentials commonly found in such test setups:

• Username: admin
• Password: admin

Surprisingly, I was able to log in with these default credentials, confirming that the staging environment was insecurely configured and open to trivial access. Although there was no real data in the staging system, this discovery raised a significant red flag.

JWT Token Exploitation: Gaining Admin Access on Production

After successfully logging into the staging environment, I noticed that the application was generating JWT (JSON Web Token) tokens for authenticated sessions. These tokens are typically used for stateless authentication, allowing the server to validate requests without maintaining session information. They’re great for authentication and information exchange, but if not implemented correctly, they can be a serious security risk.

JWT in Staging Environment:

I decided to take the JWT token generated on the staging environment admin-stgv2.sales.redacted.com and test its validity on the production environment admin.sales.redacted.com

I appended the token as an Authorization: Bearer <JWT> header to the requests sent to the production URL.

The production server accepted this token, granting me admin-level access without ever having to authenticate against the production system. This was a critical vulnerability that essentially bypassed all authentication mechanisms on the live system.

Admin Panel Access: Full System Control

With the admin access I obtained through the JWT token, I was able to explore the entire admin panel on the production environment, leading to exposure of a vast amount of sensitive user data.

The following sections of the admin panel were accessible:

1. User Management
   Under https://admin.sales.redacted.com/admin/user-management, I was able to view a list of over 7,300 users. Each user’s personal identifiable information (PII) was accessible, including:
   
   – Login
   – Username
   – Full Name
   – Email
   – Mobile Number
   – Location and Address
   – Retailer Information
   – Supervisor and Branch Details
   
   Accessing individual user details via URLs such as https://admin.sales.redacted.com/admin/user-management/username/view provided even deeper insights into personal data, posing a significant privacy risk.
   

1. Permission Management
   The URL https://admin.sales.redacted.com/permission-management allowed for changes to user permissions, meaning I could escalate privileges or restrict access for any user in the system.
   
   
   
2. Category Management
   I had the ability to alter various product or user categories via the URL https://admin.sales.redacted.com/category.
   
3. Sales Reports
   I was able to view, create, and delete sales reports under https://admin.sales.redacted.com/create-sales-report, which could manipulate key financial data.
   
4. System Reports
   I had access to high-level system reports via https://admin.sales.redacted.com/reports, offering an attacker comprehensive insights into the system’s operation.

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The Impact

To consider the potential impact of this vulnerability:

• Massive data breach of customer and business information.
• Reputational damage to the company.
• Financial losses from potential lawsuits and regulatory fines.
• Competitive disadvantage if business data were to be leaked.

Conclusion

This case study highlights the catastrophic risks posed by misconfigured staging environments and broken authentication mechanisms. The ability to reuse a JWT token generated from a test environment to gain admin access on production showcases how small oversights can lead to massive breaches.

Key takeaways include:

1. Never use default credentials in any environment, especially those publicly accessible.
2. Staging environments should be secured to the same standards as production.
3. JWT tokens should be scoped strictly to the environment in which they were generated, ensuring that tokens from one environment cannot be used in another.

I hope this blog serves as a stark reminder that security must be a top priority, even in non-production environments.